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Alcee Hastings: 'I will be the last man standing saying, You will not drill..

U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Miramar, takes to the House floor on Thursday to decry oil industry profits and rail against the idea of offshore drilling.

“Let it be clearly understood by everybody in this House of Representatives, I will be the last man standing, saying that you will not drill off the coast of Florida beyond the limits of the law that all of us agreed to, until such time you change that law.

Florida’s beaches are pristine. Florida’s tourism depends upon them.

snip

The solutions are costly, and the energy companies are the ones that are most likely to do this rather than a bunch of members of Congress running down here so that they can have a bumper sticker.

Video supplied by Hastings office.

“Everybody buys gas, everybody knows it is high, and none of us in this place are going to do one doggone thing between now and the time that we leave here that is going to cause it to come down that much that it will be dramatic.

“I have one more proposal: tax credits for buying gas.:D

We have a national crisis on our hands and we owe it to ourselves to focus on what it will take, worldwide, in this global economy that we live in and in our Nation to undertake to do what is necessary for the American public.”

Comment :
Funny... these people we send to Congress. They are idiots. Why do Americans continually elect these people?
Oh, and BY the way. Australia is ALREADY DRILLING OFF OUR SHORE IN THE GULF OF MEXICO and AMERICANS CAN NOT!!!!!!

Gang' of House members to push for drilling
By Mike Soraghan
Posted: 07/10/08 06:23 PM [ET]

The House is going to have its own “gang” of Republicans and Democrats who want to push for more drilling to relieve gas prices.

The Democrats in the group, led by Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii), will be bucking Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who earlier Thursday called efforts to open up new areas to drilling “a hoax.”

Abercrombie announced late Thursday that he and Rep. John Peterson (R-Pa.), one of the loudest voices for more drilling, will form a bipartisan working group to discuss energy issues.

In an interview this week about his work with Peterson, Abercrombie said the Democratic message on energy is not working.

“Simply standing up and saying, you can’t drill your way out of this doesn’t work,” Abercrombie said. “The people are standing up and saying, ‘Yes, we can.’”

Peterson and Abercrombie are already co-sponsors of a bill that would remove restrictions on offshore natural gas drilling. The royalty money would go to the states, the federal treasury, and to renewable energy and environmental programs. The bill has 170 co-sponsors, and Abercrombie spokesman Dave Helfert said it would be part of the group’s effort.

The goal would be to produce legislation that can pass this year, Helfert said.

Some Senate leaders have said they are more open than Pelosi to opening up new areas for drilling. And a bipartisan group of 10 senators is trying to bring bipartisanship to the debate, hoping to re-create the success of the “Gang of 14” on judicial nominations in 2005

Gang' of House members to push for drilling
By Mike Soraghan
Posted: 07/10/08 06:23 PM [ET]

Rep. Abercrombi D HI is one of the most liberal congressmen in the House of R. Damn, just damn, that is good news.

Most of these Congress critters do not have a clue how much revenues could be brought into the Treasury by drilling in AK, offshore on both coast and all of the Gulf of Mexico. The US government could reverse the balance of payments in a short time if we started drilling in all of these areas. The oil companies have to pay royalties on tracts of land that they lease on a yearly basis which brings in tremendous amounts of money. The big oil companies are fat with cash and they are willing to drill.

Rep. Abercrombi D HI is one of the most liberal congressmen in the House of R. Damn, just damn, that is good news.

Most of these Congress critters do not have a clue how much revenues could be brought into the Treasury by drilling in AK, offshore on both coast and all of the Gulf of Mexico. The US government could reverse the balance of payments in a short time if we started drilling in all of these areas. The oil companies have to pay royalties on tracts of land that they lease on a yearly basis which brings in tremendous amounts of money. The big oil companies are fat with cash and they are willing to drill.

Read and learn. My Mom's land has been leased for years. Not a thing there.

The 'Idle' Oil Field Fallacy
By RED CAVANEY
June 20, 2008; Page A13

A bill introduced in Congress this week would "compel" oil and natural gas companies to produce from federal lands they are leasing. If only it were that easy to find and produce oil. Imagine, an act of Congress that could do what geology could not.

These lawmakers ask why oil and gas companies want more access to federal lands to drill if they aren't using all of the 68 million acres they already have? Anyone with even the most basic understanding of how oil and natural gas are produced – and this should include many members of Congress – knows that claims of "idle" leases are a diversionary feint.

A company bids for and buys a lease because it believes there is a possibility that it may yield enough oil or natural gas to make the cost of the lease, and the costs of exploration and production, commercially viable. The U.S. government received $3.7 billion from company bids in a single lease sale in March 2008.

However, until the actual exploration is complete, a company does not know whether the lease will be productive. If, through exploration, it finds there is no oil or natural gas underneath a lease – or that there is not enough to justify the tremendous investment required to bring it to the surface – the company cuts its losses by moving on to more promising leases. Yet it continues to pay rent on the lease, atop a leasing bonus fee.

In addition, if the company does not develop the lease within a certain period of time, it must return it to the federal government, forfeiting all its costs. All during this active exploration and evaluation phase, however, the lease is listed as "nonproducing."

Obviously, companies want to start producing from active fields as soon as possible. However, there are a number of time-consuming steps to be taken before they can do so: Delineation wells must be drilled to size the field, government permits must be obtained, and complex production facilities must be engineered and installed. All this takes considerable time, and during that time, the lease is also listed as "nonproducing."

Because a lease is not producing, critics tag it as "idle" when, in reality, it is typically being actively explored and developed. Multiply these real-world circumstances by hundreds or thousands of leases, and you end up with the seemingly damning but inaccurate figures our critics cite.

Our companies have made tremendous strides in developing cutting-edge exploration technology. But they are not magicians. They cannot produce oil or natural gas where it does not exist. A significant percentage of federal leases simply may not contain oil and natural gas, especially in commercial quantities.

As I've often said, the first step in our business is called "exploration" for a reason. Exploration is time consuming, very costly and involves a great deal of risk. Importantly, you see neither a drop of usable oil nor a cubic foot of natural gas while it is going on. But it is absolutely essential, and there is nothing "idle" about it. Without the exploration that took place years ago, less domestic oil and natural gas would be available today to meet consumer demand.

In reality, a lease is simply a block on a map, with no guarantee that it contains any resources. If all of them did, one could simply pay for the lease, haul in equipment and start pumping oil. But that only happens in fiction.

And it happens in the minds of those who use the undeveloped-lease argument as a smokescreen to mask their intent to keep America's vast energy resources locked up underground, despite increasingly strong consumer demand for oil and natural gas. For exploration to take place, our companies need access to the areas – offshore and onshore – that we know have the potential to produce the oil and natural gas consumers will need, if ours is to remain a viable economy in an increasingly competitive global marketplace.

Today's short-term need was yesterday's long-term opportunity. If Congress had acted on that opportunity years ago, America would not be in the energy bind it finds itself in today. Working with industry, Congress now has the opportunity to help secure America's energy future. It should not miss the chance again.

Mr. Cavaney is president and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, the trade association that represents America's oil and natural gas industry.